The pressing of bearing rings into, for example, the bore of a bearing housing or onto a shaft is known. To ensure a secure seating of the bearing rings, the bearing rings are press fitted into the bore and/or onto the shaft with an overlap which depends on the specific requirements of the application. However, this typically involves competing concerns. On the one hand, an overlap as great as possible is desirable to produce a fixed and permanent seating of the bearing. On the other hand, an overlap as small as possible is preferable to avoid the negative consequences of press fitting, such as deformation of the bearing ring and the resulting out-of-roundness or even damage to the bearing ring and damage to the seat.
Particularly when high demands are placed on the dimensional accuracy and roundness in the region of the raceway or the bearing surface of the bearing ring, the typical method of proceeding is to first manufacture the bearing ring as precisely as possible and to then design the mounting process in such a way that the bearing ring is deformed as little as possible during mounting so that its dimensions are thus altered as little as possible. For this purpose, the bearing ring is positioned as carefully as possible on the seat that is provided for the bearing ring, for example in a housing bore or on a shaft and, if necessary, secured against creep.
Axial locking can be achieved by way of shoulders or stop faces and, for example, clamping rings or nuts provided for this purpose. However, locking the bearing ring against twisting is significantly more difficult. In principle, it is possible to use machine parts which engage with a form fit. However, this requires a relatively large outlay and thus frequently involves relatively high costs. Locking by way of fitting, which is more favorable with respect to costs and outlay, is typically only utilized for the range of smaller overlaps, because otherwise the precisely manufactured bearing rings are unacceptably deformed. This practice is thus restricted to fields of use with lower stresses.
DE 34 09 247 A1 discloses a process for producing bearing seats precisely on axes in light metal die cast parts in which needle bushings are press fit into calibrated sintered parts. Press fitting a hardened bearing bushing into a non-hardened bushing is discussed in DE 21 17 018 C2. The two-part bearing ring produced in this way is pressed with the aid of a mandrel into a matrix, with the external diameter of the bearing ring being calibrated through extrusion.
A need thus exists for a way of mounting bearing rings which is able to fulfill the very high demands for dimensional accuracy of the mounted bearing rings while at the same time ensuring durable and loadable fixing of the bearing rings.